Joint winners of Innovative Idea Award, Bhopal and Ahmedabad witness significant increase in realty demand

Launched by the Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri in 2017, the ‘India Smart Cities Award’ recently announced nine awards in the categories of Project Award, Innovative Idea Award and City Award. They were aimed at acknowledging and rewarding the projects and innovative ideas, which promote sustainable development in cities.

All the smart cities were eligible for the awards. Their performance was assessed on the basis of their weekly ranking score as on May 2, 2018.

A special team comprising international/multilateral experts from UN Habitat, Asian Development Bank and NIUA assessed the performance of each city on the basis of innovation, impact, replicability and scalability.
Analysing all the aspects, the committee conferred Surat with the ‘City Award’ for implementation of projects, in the categories of urban environment, transport and mobility and sustainable integrated development.
Bhopal and Ahmedabad were the joint winners of the Innovative Idea award. As a result, there has been a considerable increase in their real estate segment. The cities have harnessed unparalleled interest from realty buyers and developers lately.

Bhopal was also declared the 2nd cleanest city in the Cleanliness Survey 2018, under the flagship of Swachh Bharat mission. Realty developers like Nitin Agrawal  MD of Swadesh Builders Bhopal, Mahendra Builders, and Bhoomi Group are offering state-of-the-art realty projects to cater to the increasing real estate demand.
As a matter of fact, Bhopal and Ahmedabad have been awarded for Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) and Safe and Secure Ahmedabad (SASA) Project respectively.

The most innovative and successful projects were honoured with the project awards, in seven categories that have been completed by April 1, 2018.
The Projects selected include:

• PMC Care from Pune under ‘Governance’ category
• Smart Place Making from Pune under ‘Built Environment’
• Smart Class rooms from NDMC and Jabalpur, Smart Campus from Visakhapatnam, Lighthouse from Pune under ‘Social Aspects’ category
• B Nest Incubation Centre from Bhopal and Conservation of Rajasthan School of Arts from Jaipur under ‘Culture and Economy’ category
• Public Bike Sharing from Bhopal, Pune, Coimbatore and Waste to Energy Plant in Jabalpur under ‘Urban environment’ category
• Integrated Transit Management System (TMS) from Ahmedabad and Surat under ‘Transport and Mobility’ category
• Smart Water Management through SCADA from Ahmedabad under ‘Water and Sanitation’ category

For the uninitiated, the India Smart Cities Award was launched on June 25, 2017 with an aim to reward cities, projects and innovative ideas, promoting sustainable development in cities. The award is given in 3 categories of viz. Innovative Idea Award, City Award and Project Award. Only selected Smart Cities are eligible participants for the award. Respective ULBs or Smart City SPVs need to submit proposals for this award.